Space, Identities and Memory

SPACE, IDENTITIES AND MEMORY

Birkbeck Institutes of Social Research and the Humanities Graduate Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS

Space, Identities and Memory

Deadline for Submission of Abstracts: 11/03/2016.

Contact: bihbisrconference@gmail.com

We invite postgraduate researchers, academics, activists, artists, and practitioners from across disciplines to contribute to the Birkbeck Institutes’ (BIH/BISR) annual two day conference held from the 13th to the 14th  May 2016.

This year’s conference theme seeks to examine the interplay between identity, space and memory, exploring the ways in which identities may be created, formed and informed by spatial and temporal contexts. In particular, we seek to examine to what extent identities are performed in response to political, social and cultural pressures, including historical circumstances leading to the construction of acceptable and unacceptable identities.

The conference aims to capture the complex overlaying of identities in time and space, and the agency of individuals and communities as they address their own complex understandings of the temporality of identity. Conversely, we hope the conference will highlight how space and time are influenced and shaped by everyday life, sociabilities, mobilisations and processes of subjectivation. In particular we are seeking papers that engage with topics such as:

 

• The built environment: how are housing, architecture, urbanity and concepts of public and private space harnessed in the self-fashioning of individual and communal identity?
• Gender, sexuality and race, the politics of becoming and the deterritorialisation of the body;
• ’Home’, domesticity and concepts of solitude and isolation across time and space;
• Spaces of dissent and resistance: how is memory imbricated in public spaces as sites of encounters, direct action and creative practices?
• Displacements and borders: constructing or disassembling boundaries from local to global;
• Explorations in the use of maps, social cartography and critical geography;
• Exclusion and inclusion in institutional spaces: how have institutionalised spaces cemented or challenged contemporary and past perspectives on identity?
• Narrating the past: memorialisation, contestation and re-enactment
• Innovative methods and approaches in the investigation of the intersections between space, identity and memory

 

Our first confirmed keynote speaker is Andy Merrifield. The conference will conclude with a round table bringing together activists, practitioners and academics.

This is an interdisciplinary conference, designed to foster creative thinking and new research agendas. To this end, we encourage papers from a diversity of disciplinary backgrounds that explore the interconnections of space, identity and memory.

We are particularly interested in receiving contributions from artists and practitioners in education, the heritage sector or related fields to participate in this interdisciplinary conference.

Proposals

We warmly welcome abstracts for 20-minute panel papers. Abstracts should be between 200-300 words in length. Please include a short biography with your submission.  The deadline for submission of abstracts is the 11/03/2016. Authors will be notified regarding the acceptance of their paper after submissions have been reviewed and no later than 31/03/2016.

Contact Details

Please send enquiries and proposals to Beth Hodgett, Calum Wright, Eva Lauenstein & Moniza Rizzini at:

bihbisrconference@gmail.com

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

 

Social Class in the Twenty-First Century

Social Class

SOCIAL CLASS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

AMSTERDAM RESEARCH CENTER GENDER AND SEXUALITY

Conference: ‘Social Class in the 21^st Century’

October 22-23, 2015

See: http://arcgs.uva.nl/news-events/events/social-class-conference/social-class-conference/content/folder/social-class-conference.html

Theme

Intersections between class, gender and sexuality revisited

The question of social class has re-emerged as a central concern for the analysis and politics of gender and sexuality in the public sphere in many societies worldwide. The ascent and subsequent crisis of global neoliberalism have been deeply implicated in growing inequalities, which have affected the shape of gender and sexual meanings and relations in fundamental ways.

Confirmed keynote speakers: Professor Cecilia Ridgeway and Professor Anoop Nayak + Roundtable by Professor Gloria Wekker

• Whereas some women have emerged as highly successful agents in the new global economy, their ascent to wealth and power is almost always contingent upon the labor and ongoing exclusion of other – the working classes, the poor, migrants, and/or women of colour.
• Similarly, with the introduction of some openly lesbian women and gay men into the cosmopolitan-managerial and so-called ‘creative’ global classes, very particular articulations of LGBTQ identity and culture – mostly middle-class and ‘homonormative’ – have become more visible.
• At the same time alternative and marginalized expressions of LGBTQ identity have increasingly disappeared from public view. Among other factors, social class has played a key role in these dynamics. While institutional sexism and homophobia have perhaps lessened for social upper classes, the social exclusion of others has increased as the result of growing inequality and precarity.
• These dynamics call for greater attention to the interconnections between social class, race and ethnicity, and gender and sexuality.

Focus on Class

Contemporary global developments exemplify what has long been seen as a central topic of scholarly inquiry: class and other social and cultural divisions have affected lived experiences and have had an impact on people’s abilities and opportunities, as well as on their constructions of gender and sexual identities, categories, and politics. A focus on ‘inclusion’, equal rights and democratic citizenship runs the danger of obscuring growing structural inequalities. Inside and outside of the academy, intersectional and other new forms of critical analysis have gone a long way in accounting for such inequalities, as well as for the divergent social positioning of actors. Nonetheless, these new approaches have not been productive on all levels of social relations and dynamics. Partly as the result of the crisis of Marxism and the theoretical problems associated with overtly reductive class analyses, the effects of class on gender and sexuality remain under-theorized and have suffered from insufficient empirical investigation.

The dominance of white, middle-class, homonormative, and cisgender LGBTQ cultures and identities in scholarly debates conceals class differences and the dominance of a particular ontology. A focus on class and its interconnection with race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality enables scholars to take seriously the complexities of contemporary gender and sexual dynamics in a global world. Class analysis not only unveils inequality but brings to light difference, distinction and dissent, both between and within social groups. Such an analysis questions the dominance of particular identities, but does not satisfy itself with explanations attributing alternative experiences to essentialized or depoliticized notions of cultural difference.

Dominance of global Western ontologies

A major question that needs to be addressed is the dominance of global Western ontologies in the study of social class. North–south comparisons (as well as comparisons unsettling this binary) will bring fresh insights into the way in which global dynamics have reconfigured relations between classes or the concept of class itself.

For instance, class identification in many parts of the world is a matter of how well connected one is transnationally, resulting in specific forms of gender inequality. Transnational migration also reveals class dynamics in configuration with sexuality, from exploitation and labour rights in migrant sex work to examples of successful transgender migration patterns. Neo-liberalisation is often and rightly so critiqued for creating (more) inequalities, but for some groups in the global South it also implies new opportunities. Recent studies on the global middle classes, for instance, have also emphasized the symbolic meaning of class. Eventually, such studies point out the necessity of questioning how the material and cultural dimensions are dialectically intertwined in the generation of gendered class subjectivities and relations. Exploring the class dynamics of gender and sexuality in and from the global South thus brings new understandings.

Interconnected developments 

Four interconnected developments background our call for a focus on class:

• Gender and sexuality are often largely absent from class analysis.
• Class since the 1980s has increasingly been abandoned as a theoretical tool in feminist theory, even though Marxism had informed feminist theory and practice until the 1980s.
• The central role that queer approaches to social and cultural analysis attributes to choice, change, and the destabilization of categories comes at a cost, namely the lack of attention to more enduring power relations and inequalities.
• Taking a transnational standpoint will help further theorise the questions of social classes in the 21st century.

Unpacking the concept of class – aim of this conference

The way forward, we suggest, is to start unpacking the concept of class. Interestingly, while most of us recognise immediately the notion of class, definitions of it remain elusive and differ tremendously in their reach and implications.

During this conference we intend to explore various routes to unpack the formulation of class through the prism of gender and sexuality:

• The first question is the matter of scale: from day-to-day interaction, via various levels to the state, and the transnational level: when does class matter?
• Hence, what makes class matter?
• What are the material and/or symbolic characteristics of class and how do they matter?
• Which social, political or cultural ideas, practices and institutions ‘form’ social class?
• Last but not least, how can class analysis shed light on gender and sexual relations, and how does gender and sexuality analysis shed light on class?

We invite papers from the wide range of social sciences, including social history, to take up these questions and engage in an interdisciplinary debate.

Call for Papers

We invite papers from the wide range of social sciences, including social history, to take up these questions and engage in an interdisciplinary debate.

Please send:

• Name of panel for which you are submitting
• Author name and email address
• Title
• Abstract (up to 250 words)

Online form 

Please use the online form below to submit paper proposals for the conference Social Class in the 21st Century. Submission is open from April 15, 2015 until May 29, 2015 Authors will be notified of the decision by mid-June 2015.

Submission of Papers: http://arcgs.uva.nl/news-events/events/social-class-conference/social-class-conference/content/folder/call-for-papers/call-for-papers/call-for-papers/cpitem-2/link/papers.html

Registration and Fees: http://arcgs.uva.nl/news-events/events/social-class-conference/social-class-conference/content/folder/registration/registration.html

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

The Neoliberal University: Gender, Class, and Sexuality

Education for Debt

THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY: GENDER, CLASS, AND SEXUALITY

AMSTERDAM RESEARCH CENTER GENDER AND SEXUALITY

Conference: ‘Social Class in the 21^st Century’

Panel Call for Papers: Deadline May 29^th 2015

Panel on: The Neoliberal University: Gender, Class, & Sexuality

This panel intends to investigate processes of bureaucratization and business-afication of the university and the role that these have in re-shaping the interrelations of class, gender, and sexuality; and the specific ways that the change from educational pedagogy to business model has impacted classed, gendered, and sexual practices and relationships.

The rise of neoliberalism coincided with the increase of enrollments in universities and this panel proposes to investigate these two in relation to each other. The scale of the university has increased in terms of rising numbers of students enrolled. Also, as university has become more accessible to larger numbers of citizens, the importance of higher education as a marker of class has become, relatively, more available.

In the light of these shifts, the question is how the (increasing) importance of the university as a site of emancipation takes on questions of gender norms and practices, as well as forms of sexuality.

On the one hand, universities can be seen as sites of normative structures regarding gender, sexuality, race / ethnicity, class, age and more, shaping normativity from aesthetics to (gendered) harassment on college campuses.

On the other hand, universities have also been the sites for social justice and emancipation, regarding gender and sexuality, by the way of Women’s & Gender studies, LGBT studies and Queer Theory.

This panel seeks to bring together a collection of papers on the role of the neoliberal university in shaping, marking, and creating new expressions and relations of gender, class, and sexuality. In this way, it opens up the discussion to allow for the varied ways that universities implement and allow possibly opposing development of providing spaces for emancipation as well as reproducing normative spaces in terms of gendered, sexualized and classed possibilities.

Papers should seek to elaborate on both theoretical elements and empirical cases (from the Global North and South) and aspects of the role of the university in the 21st Century and its impact on gender, class, and sexuality.

http://arcgs.uva.nl/news-events/events/social-class-conference/social-class-conference/content/folder/panels/panels/panels/content/folder/the-neoliberal-university-gender-class–sexuali.html

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/conference-cfp-the-neoliberal-university

Conference Website: http://arcgs.uva.nl/news-events/events/social-class-conference/social-class-conference/content/folder/social-class-conference.html

***END***

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Violence, Representations and Sexuality

Aesthetics

VIOLENCE, REPRESENTATIONS AND SEXUALITY

FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL NETWORK FOR SEXUAL ETHICS AND POLITICS – INSEP

CALL FOR PAPERS – INSEP2015

13th ‐ 15th July, 2015, Ghent University, Belgium
Hosted by CEVI – Centre for Ethics and Value Inquiry
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2
9000 Ghent – Belgium
See: http://www.insep.ugent.be/insep2015/
General Conference Theme – Violence, Representations and Sexuality

The relationship between violence and sexuality is one of the most critical areas of engagement for sex and sexuality research and activism. There continues to be an epidemic of violence against women and children – rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment and abuse – across the globe, manifest in different cultural customs and practices, authority structures, hetero‐patriarchal and hetero‐normative regimes at both national (and supranational in the case of trafficking) and everyday micro levels. This epidemic is often met with: limited regulatory responses suffused with heterosexist assumptions; legal authorities that fail to prioritise or regard it is less important than other criminal activity; indifference; and/or claims that the prevalent cultural milieu makes it impossible to act. While some efforts have been made in North America, Europe and Australasia to effect change, in many parts of the globe sexual subjection and suffering continues to be seen as a normal state of affairs.

Equally, across the globe sexual difference and departures from heterosexuality are met by varying degrees of violence, ranging from physical attack and murder, to prejudicial and pathological assumptions that are present even in the social context of equality and rights discourses. To be different is still to be ‘othered’ to varying degrees, and that ‘othering’ often takes damaging forms of practice against those who present themselves as different.

The cultural and representational contexts are of particular importance here. It is in the representational form that we most saliently see the cultural demarcations of legitimacy and illegitimacy for sex and sexuality. Through representations, tensions are played out in the public arena that are sometimes manifest only in inter‐subjective or hetero‐normative meaning making. In societies where gay men and lesbians are formally recognised, there remains a dichotomy between the ‘respectable’ different that operates within homonormative constraints and lives without troubling heteronormative assumption, and the ‘queer’ whose personal practices challenge or disrupt cultural and social norms as a feature of being themselves. Likewise, the representation of sex in mainstream medias often reinforces particular understandings and meanings suffused with power, presumption and prejudice. Against that, alternate forms of media can play an important role in promote constructive understandings of the relationship between desire, pleasure and healthy satisfaction.

Violence and sexuality also creates a nexus of troubling contradictions. Recently, the fetishisation of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’, e.g., normalises a commodified and limited exploration of sexual imagination, whilst BDSMers and others who wish to move beyond difference as an adjunct to genito‐centric and penetrative sex remain culturally prejudiced against and subject to different and sometimes punishing pathologies and legal regulatory regimes. Pornography and prostitution represent other areas of contestation. Is pornography or prostitution inherently violent? Or is there room for sufficient levels of agency and choice? The juxtaposition of pain, violence and sex, whether in practice or in representation, whether consenting or not, splits those radical voices who often support sexual freedom. Does violence and sexuality represent a fault‐line for disagreement? Is that disagreement one of language and representation or of power, degradation and its effects? We welcome papers that explore any aspect of the relationship between violence, representation, sexuality and sex. As always, we also welcome other papers that reflect innovative, creative and thought‐provoking work on sexual ethics and politics in general. For this purpose we retain open streams at the conference. Please feel free to email the conference organisers for further inquiries.

Acceptance Policy

The fifth international conference of INSEP welcomes papers, presentations and panels focusing on conceptual and theoretical debates, cultural and political analysis and empirical studies from which conceptual, ethical and political conclusions are drawn.

INSEP seeks to provide a critical and dynamic space for cutting edge thinking, new research and key discussions and debates about issues of sexual ethics or politics, whether conceptual and theoretical discourse, analytical studies or aesthetically or empirically constituted insights. INSEP sees the value in the fullest range of approaches to the study of sexual ethics and politics, including: gendered and feminist perspectives; distinctive lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and transsexual perspectives; queer perspectives; and approaches from more general positions such as liberalism, Marxism and democratic theory.

The 2015 conference seeks to be an inclusive space for discussion, welcoming dialogue and vigorous debate, but not sectarianism. We consider paper proposals and panel proposals from any disciplinary field, and are willing to consider expositions that take less orthodox forms.

To facilitate funding applications ‐ please note INSEP has no funds of its own – we operate a ‘rolling’ process of abstract review and acceptance or rejection, and can provide documentation where it is required to facilitate funding. Our turnaround time for refereeing is 10 days.

Submission & Timeline: Submissions for papers (250 words), panels or workshops (500 word stipulating participants) should reach us by Monday 15 June at the latest. Earlier of course, is better.

Normal acceptance/rejection notification ‐ 10 days. All delegates/paper‐givers must register by Monday 23 June, and we encourage earlier registration when acceptances have been communicated.

Please send abstracts to: insep.network@gmail.com

The conference fee for the full three days is 150 Euros, which includes the conference pack and refreshments. A concessionary rate of 100 Euros is available to students and postgraduates.

INSEP publishes a journal and a book series with Barbara Budrich Publishers. We would anticipate commissioning publications from the conference and, dependent on quality and coherence, may publish a collection based on themes emerging from the conference. INSEP also welcomes submissions to the journal and proposals to the Book Series.

About INSEP

Sexual ethics and politics lie at the heart of how we understand and practice our sexual lives. They form the basis from which we understand and engage with diverse and different sexualities. Both, however, are currently open to question. On the one hand, discussion of sexual ethics has previously been confined to the auspices of an abstract intellectual discourse, effectively separating it from practice. Sexual politics, on the other hand, has seen progressive advances through world‐wide activism by grass‐roots movements, NGOs and national and international agents, but in the push for progress, the space for self‐critique and reflexivity is often eradicated. INSEP wants to activate a critical dialogue between sexual ethics and politics by connecting them and exploring the ways they can contribute to each other. The sexual is political and just as sexual politics could be enriched by emancipatory ethical thinking, sexual ethics should connect with contemporary sexual activism, politics and practices aiming for the realisation of sexual equalities and justice.
For more info on INSEP & the 2015 conference please visit:

INSEP2015: http://www.insep.ugent.be/insep2015/
INSEP – http://www.insep.ugent.be/
Journal INSEP – http://budrich‐journals.de/index.php/insep
Paul Reynolds
Reader in Sociology and Social Philosophy
Edge Hill University, UK
reynoldp@edgehill.ac.uk
Tom Claes
Associate Professor of Ethics
Ghent University, Belgium
Tom.Claes@UGent.be

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Social and Political Thought Conference 2015

Aesthetics

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT CONFERENCE 2015

FEMINISM & CRITICAL THEORY

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT CONFERENCE

UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX, JUNE 20-21, 2015

In the face of enforced austerity, rampant and increasing inequality, systemic crises of political, economic and environmental organisation, and violence and injustice on a global scale, there has been a resurgence of interest in both feminism and critical theory, as ways of understanding and criticising the world as it is. That such disasters disproportionately affect women is not, of course, new, nor are they differentiated solely through gender – race, sexuality, dis/ability, class and nationality also come into play. Yet many have detected an increase in violence, both (and often simultaneously) material and symbolic, directed against women and gender non-conformists across the world. Examples range from the ‘pornification’ of an increasingly misogynist popular culture (and equally misogynist ‘moral panics’ about the threat posed to society by deviant sexualities), to brutal cuts to already embattled women’s services, to continued institutional discrimination and institutionalised abuse (Yarl’s Wood is just one site).

This has been met with resistance in a variety of forms, on the ground in social movements and protests, and in many recent theoretical developments both scholarly and popular, including: the republication of many classic Marxist and socialist feminist texts of the 1970s and 80s; important contemporary debates, situated within both analytic and continental philosophy, on how to challenge the patriarchal nature of philosophy as a discipline and as disciplinary ideology; the emergence of innovative new journals such as the materialist feminist LIES; and scholarly reappraisals of radical twentieth-century figures like Shulamith Firestone, Claudia Jones and Rosa Luxemburg.

This year’s Social and Political Thought conference will investigate ? the relationship between feminism and other critical social theories in light of these developments. We begin by recognising that the different schools (and historical ‘waves’) of feminist thought are themselves often divergent and opposed. Furthermore, we recognise that there is a certain level of ambivalence attached to the term ‘critical theory’. In the narrow sense, it can refer to theory influenced by the Frankfurt School and the work of Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse (and, on some interpretations, Habermas and Honneth). In the broad sense, on the other hand, it can refer to a group of interrelated, sometimes competing, social theories directed against the status quo, of which feminist thought is one strand. We view this ambivalence and its relationship to feminist theory and practice as potentially productive, and encourage submissions that deal with all kinds of feminism and their relationship to critical theory in both the narrow and broad senses of the term, including feminism as critical theory.

Possible approaches include but are not limited to: Marxist feminism or feminist thought engaging with Marxism; feminism, materiality, and ‘new materialisms’; feminist social movements and the politics of popular protest; feminism, police, and prisons; feminism and problems of universality; feminism and psychoanalysis; feminism and autonomism; anarchist feminism; post-crisis masculinities and feminism; postcolonialism and feminism; black British feminism; sexual, racial and social contracts; feminism and the politics and theory of intersectionality; feminism and nationalism; feminism and orientalism in the war on terror; ‘third wave’ feminism; feminism and new forms of slavery; feminism in the global South; feminism and poststructuralism;  feminism and communisation theory; feminism and LGBTQI struggles; feminism and sex-work; feminism and social reproduction; feminism and revolution.

 

Keynote Speakers:

Stella Sandford (Kingston University)

Lorna Finlayson (University of Cambridge)

 

We encourage submissions for both individual and full-panel presentations. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent to ssptreviews@sussex.ac.uk by March 15 2015. In order to facilitate a double-blind review process, please send two separate attachments, one containing a short biographical note, and another containing your abstract with no identifying information.

See: https://ssptjournal.wordpress.com/social-and-political-thought-conference-june-20-21-2015/

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

 

‘Time and Space in the Social Universe of Capital’ – by Michael Neary and Glenn Rikowski, now at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/10545768/Time_and_Speed_in_the_Social_Universe_of_Capital

 

Beyond Homonormativity?

Feminism

BEYOND HOMONORMATIVITY?

Brunel Centre for Social and Political Thought

“The Art of Government: Perspectives in Social and Political Thought”

Workshop: Beyond Homonormativity? Reconsidering Queer Emancipation

Friday 16th January 2015, 2-6pm, MRJD118, Brunel University, London

Lisa Duggan’s analysis of “the new homonormativity … a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions but upholds and sustains them” stress the problem of western, mostly white, “middle class”, urban, lesbian and gay formations’ political aspirations toward acceptance within contemporary neoliberal economic and political systems. These aspirations factually discard earlier GLBT commitments to economic redistribution, liberation and emancipation in the 1970s. Some examples include claims for normative domestic kinship arrangements relying on neoliberal philosophies of privacy, United States and European exceptionalism and homonationalism marginalizing racialized formations, and the concomitant embracing and promotion of models of gay globalization and formal cultural identity that exclude non-normative sexualities.

This workshop asks participants to think about homonormativity as an occasion to go beyond the simple, although necessary, critiques of sexual formations’ reactionary politics and to reflect on positive alternatives of strategies and politics from queer political formations’ experiences and needs.

Does the accent on discourse, norms, identities and individuality, on which the concept of homonormativity mostly relies, obscure wider structural, historical and ideological causes of the contemporary depoliticization and normalization of gay and lesbian formations, or it is a way to highlight the threat of domestication and of foreclosing of radical and outlaw possibilities of queer?

Can a critical analysis of non-Western and non-white sexual and gender diversity and categorizations contribute to a better understanding and critique of the individualistic and liberal conception of Western and colonial sexual epistemology? Can inputs from Marxism on the relationship between commodification, consumption and culture and recognition of actual queer commons in every day life contribute to a theorization of queer ethics that could disentangle the liberal ideology of private/public divide in the interests of new queer and sexual politics? Are there actually existing alternative sexual practices and ethics and queer anti-capitalist politics that could open up a perspective on emancipation?

The workshop will highlight and showcase these and other connected questions from different but interrelated political, methodological and theoretical approaches.

 

Speakers

Gavin Brown, University of Leicester

Gianfranco Rebucini, Brunel University, London

Paul Reynolds, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk

Leticia Sabsay, London School of Economics and Political Science

 

Organised by Gianfranco Rebucini, Braudel Fellow at Brunel University.

For more information, contact: gianfranco.rebucini@gmail.com

BSPT: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/cbass/politics-history-law/politics/research/bspt

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Historical Materialism Conference New York: Returns of Capital

Marx’s Grave

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM CONFERENCE NEW YORK: RETURNS OF CAPITAL

New York University, April 24-26, 2015

http://hmny.org/

Capitalism is “back,” in more ways than one.  Since the crisis of 2008, academics and commentators beyond the usual confines of the Marxist left have once again begun discussing capitalism as a system.  Debates about class, exploitation, and inequality have assumed a prominence they have not seen in decades, exemplified in the media event surrounding the publication of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century.  Prompting these discussions is a capitalism that has “returned to form”. Austerity, casualization and precarity, and naked class aggression—attributes of capitalism proper rather than merely its neoliberal variant—have intensified. The years since the crisis have suggested that neoliberalism was no mere interlude, but rather a prelude to the “new normal.” But how “new” is this normalcy? Aspects of capitalism in the Victorian era are back—and for now, here to stay. Although this is in no way unprecedented, they represent new challenges to Marxist inquiry.

HMNY 2015 seeks to examine these twin returns.  What are the analytic  challenges of these returns within capitalism?  What have been the costs of the absence of Marxist answers?  In what ways has capitalism returned to form, while continuing to present novel problems?  And what does all of this mean for movements contesting capital?

The conference is part of an international project tied to the Historical Materialism journal and book series, published by Brill. The journal also sponsors conferences that take place in London, Toronto, Delhi, Rome and Australia. Please note: the HM conference is not a conventional academic conference, but rather a space for discussion, debate and the launching of collective projects. We strongly encourage speakers to participate in the whole of the conference.

For questions about submission policy and process, logistics, or anything else related to the conference, please email hmnewyork2014@gmail.com.

Abstracts may be submitted at http://hmny.org/ (Click on “CFP HMNY 2015”). Abstracts should be approximately 200 words, and the deadline for proposals is January 15, 2015. We especially welcome submissions and, in particular, panel proposals,  around the following conference themes:

TRACKS

• Contemporary class formation
• Capitalism, Ecology and Alternatives
• New Research on the Socialist and Communist Tradition
• Philosophical Foundations of Marxism
• Politics and Philosophy of Gender
• Circulation and Logistics
• Revolution and Counterrevolution in the Middle East
• The Economic and Political Logic of Austerity
• Race, the State, and Capital
• Marxism and Aesthetics
• Capital and Sexuality
• Debt and Finance in the Political Economy of Capitalism
• Theories of Crisis
• State Violence and Mass Incarceration
• Social Protests: Riots, Revolt, Organization
• Echoes of the Long 1970s: Wildcats and Rank and File Rebellion
• Makings of the World Working Class
• Revolution and Reform in Latin America

 

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Law, Gender and Sexuality: Sources and Methods in Socio-Legal Research

Work & Days

LAW, GENDER AND SEXUALITY: SOURCES AND METHODS IN SOCIO-LEGAL RESEARCH

Monday 19th May 2014

Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

London

This event, organised collaboratively by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, the Socio-Legal Studies Association and the British Library, aims to draw attention to archives and content that newcomers to the field may not be aware of and to consider the methodological and practical issues involved in analysing sources.

Speakers include specialists in the fields of Law, Gender and Sexuality from academia, archives and libraries.

Advance registration is required.

To register, make payment and to see the full programme, please see the IALS events page on the School of Advanced Study website: www.sas.ac.uk/events/view/15965

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski at Academia: http://independent.academic.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskpoint.blogspot.com

Feminisms and Marxisms

Aesthetics

FEMINISMS AND MARXISMS

Feminisms and Marxisms: Connecting Struggles, Rethinking Limits
Call for Papers within the framework of the 10th Historical Materialism Conference, Making the World Working Class.
7-10 November 2013, London, SOAS.
Deadline: May 21

Abstracts for papers and panels should uploaded to:
http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/conferences/annual10/submit

(Visit http://feminismsandmarxisms.wordpress.com/)

Our present poses enormous political and analytical challenges to those committed to the struggle against the oppression and exploitation of women. It demands the creation of spaces for the development of an oppositional culture able to confront new forms of domination, rethink its own assumptions and foster serious political responses. One year ago Historical Materialism launched a call for papers on Feminisms and Marxisms with the aim to provide a space for a dialogue between Feminist and Marxist critiques of capitalism in their various articulations. The response to the call went beyond our most optimistic expectations, demonstrating the vitality and wealth of new research inspired by Marxist-Feminist approaches.

This call aims to build on last year’s discussions, giving voice to a new generation of anti-capitalist feminists and continuing a collective reflection about how Feminisms and Marxisms can together contribute to criticising and transforming the present. At this year’s conference, we aim to think beyond the issue of the compatibilities or tensions between Feminism and Marxism as separate traditions, and explore the way in which they provide the tools to intervene in contemporary debates about labour, oppression and power. We also hope to foster new approaches to old debates, from social reproduction to patriarchy, and advance the understanding of the historic limits and contemporary potentials of Marxist-Feminist theorisations of capitalism.

We welcome papers that address (but are not confined to) the following themes:
Marxist-Feminism in the 21st century
Social Reproduction Feminism and Intersectionality Theory
The Political Economy of Sex Work and Sex Workers’ Struggles
Class/Gender Intersections: Masculinities, LGBTQ, Queer Studies and Trans Politics.
Homophobia and Heteronormativity
Gendered Labour Exploitation
Feminist and Marxist critiques of Racism and Islamophobia
Marxist Feminism and Materialist Feminism
Securitization and Carceral Detention
Theories of Sexuality, Bodies, Embodiment
Feminisms, Marxisms and Art Theory
Gender, International Migration and the Political Economy of Care
Feminist-Marxist Critique of Sexual Violence
Diaspora, Indigeneity, and Solidarity in Marxisms and Feminisms
Inclusive Theories of Class and Resistance
Marxist-Feminist critiques of historical and 21st-century fascism
Feminism and Autonomist Marxism: Understanding the legacy
Marxism and Feminist economics

We welcome and encourage people to submit panel proposals. When you do so, please send an abstract of the general theme of the panel together with the abstracts of the individual papers in the panel. For individual paper proposals, it is helpful, although it is not necessary, to indicate the theme (above) to which your paper could contribute. This will help us to compose the panels.

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Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales); and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Workshop on Femonationalism

Feminism

WORKSHOP ON FEMONATIONALISM

Amsterdam Research Center for Gender and Sexuality (ARC-GS)

Gender & Sexuality Workshop

“Femonationalism, civic integration and their discontents”

Sara R. Farris

(IAS, Princeton 2012-2013;

Sociology Department, Cambridge University, UK)

 

Discussant:

Saskia Bonjour

(LeidenUniversity, Institute for History)

 

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a study of the recent ‘civic integration’ turn in Europe and its emphasis upon women’s equality. Civic integration refers to the main principle guiding the common EU agenda for the integration of third country nationals (i.e., immigrants from the Global South). It emphasizes the need for immigrants to learn the language, history and values of the European country of destination in order for them to achieve successful integration. Civic integration programs put particular emphasis on gender equality, both in terms of promoting immigrant women’s participation in the EU labor market and in terms of presenting gender equality as one of the pillars of European values. By showing how the gender mainstreaming of integration programs is concretely implemented, particularly in countries such as the Netherlands, France and Italy, this paper will address the paradoxes lying at the heart of the European agenda on integration. In particular, such paradoxes will be addressed in terms of (a) the nationalist translation of EU supranational directives and the nationalist mobilisation of gender equality, or what I call Femonationalism, which have been deployed mainly in an Islamophobic manner; (b) the contradictions of ‘emancipatory liberal feminism’ which interprets women’s emancipation as women’s wage work ‘outside the household’; (c) the role of immigrant women and reproductive labor under neoliberalism. The paper will analyze these trends by means of the conceptual tools provided by the sociology of migration, political economy and feminist theory.

 

Date: Friday, March 15

Time: 10:30-12:30

Location: Bushuis, F0.22 (Kloveniersburgwal 48)

 

The workshop is free and open to the public. Registration is not required.

First published in: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/workshop-on-femonationalism-with-sara-r.-farris-amsterdam-15-march

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Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales); and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Genetics: The Sociology of Identity

Smoke Monster

GENETICS: THE SOCIOLOGY OF IDENTITY

Genetics: The Sociology of Identity

Sociology Special Issue Call for Papers

REMINDER – Deadline: 31 July 2012

There is still time to submit your paper to this special issue.

The special issue, for October 2013, addresses the many ways in which genetic knowledge and technologies intersect with the formations of personal, social, cultural, racial/ethnic and national identities in contemporary societies. It will bring together sociological analysis of identity concepts and practices with reflections on the role of genetic knowledge in the formation of contemporary identities.

Possible themes may include but are not limited to the following:

• Genetics, normativity and the dynamics of identity
• The role of genetics in creating and contesting racialised identities
• Genetics, colonialism, imperialism and power
• Genetics in social institutions: medicine, policing, immigration
• State surveillance, including forensic DNA technologies and immigration politics
• Genetic screening, and the remaking of health risk and at-risk populations
• Social movements, genetic identities and the dynamics of identity-based activism around health, disability and other issues
• New genetic identities
• Genetics and the contestation and remaking of parenting and kinship
• The geneticisation of sex/gender/sexuality
• Fairness and equality: how wealth, economic structures, patenting, and the regulation of markets and products influence access to genetic testing and the ability to articulate certain identity claims

Editorial Team
Editor-in-Chief: Christine Hauskeller (University of Exeter)
Co-editors: Gill Haddow (University of Edinburgh), Steve Sturdy (University of Edinburgh) and Richard Tutton (University of Lancaster) 

Conveners of the ESRC Genomics Network stream on Genomics and Identity Politics

Full call for papers:  http://www.britsoc.co.uk/publications/pubsvacancies

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‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

International Socialism Journal – Issue 130

World Crisis

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM JOURNAL – ISSUE 130

Now Out

See: http://www.isj.org.uk

Analysis

The return of the Arab revolution
Alex Callinicos

Engels on the power of nature

The return of fear
Iain Ferguson

Tunisia: the people’s revolution
Chamseddine Mnasri

Act One of the Egyptian Revolution
Philip Marfleet

Social media and social movements
Jonny Jones

The origins of the united front policy
John Riddell

The Tories, Eton and private schools
David Renton

I love the sound of breaking glass: the London crowd, 1760-2010
Keith Flett

Feedback

Facing the crisis: the strategic perplexity of the left
Stathis Kouvelakis

Sexuality, alienation and capitalism
Sheila McGregor

Counterpower, participatory democracy, revolutionary defence: debating Black Flame, revolutionary anarchism and historical Marxism
Lucien van der Walt

The social roots of “impairment”
Lee Humber

Book reviews

We want rebel music
Lee Billingham

Natural’s not in it
Martin Empson

State of the union
Chris Bambery

Forgotten famine
John Newsinger

Africa’s opening
Andy Wynne

Pick of the quarter
This quarter’s selection

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

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Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com